The beauty of words is in their submissive but deceiving nature. You dictate them. Yet, they escape from your control and take on a life of their own. A narrative that you did not wish to tell but it was waiting for your hands to reach for the paper to escape. Yet we rely on words to do most of our communicating. And we think we can hide behind those words. Most times we can. Most of us are too busy building our own fortress of words that we do not take the time to see through the other’s cracks, to catch that little glimpse of honesty lurking just beneath the surface.
Things are always on our mind. Whether we choose to confront our emotions or not, they creep into our actions, our undertones, our shrugs and our eye rolls. Some of us are better at concealing these dead giveaways, just like others are better at reading them. I’m still working on the latter, I’ve already mastered a poker face, a bitch face and the ever popular of-course- I’m-listening face.
What I am yet to learn is how to listen. How to silence my self-centered, self-absorbed self for five minutes and just listen. Listen to my friends build up their walls of excuses to defend decisions they were told not to make. To actually listen to what those excuses are telling me. Why did they really think that they knew better? Because, maybe they did. Maybe it made perfect and absolute sense to them. And I can’t see it because I don’t ever really listen. When I hear them talk, it is through my brain’s filter of judgments and opinions. Shut up brain, will you, for five minutes?
Hard as we try, we will judge. And who are we to judge? I am not better than you. You are not better than me. In certain aspects, you may as well be. But I have my pride, like you do yours. And to defeat that pride we must rise above always thinking we are right, because most of the time we are not. And the few times we are, giving someone else a chance will show you a side you didn’t think to argue. You might come across a way of thinking so unique that your air tight argument feels threatened. You will learn. And you will grow. So next time someone needs you, try to listen. Like really listen. You might discover a silent SOS call, or a hidden genius.